Wholly

The pitchline goes like this: John decides to change, or at least think more about changing, the way he eats.

The process is sort of underway. The backstory is that at 48 years of age, I tend to eat like a teenager. I have never forsaken my love of steak & cheese subs, preferably with Canadian bacon when the opportunity presents itself, and my divorced dad routine has put me in a secondary routine--okay, bad habit--that involves me rolling through any fast-food drive-thru in my path as I drive from house B to house A to assail the questionable offerings of the dollar menu. Lord help me, that Buck Double at BK is an amazing temptress. Especially with just mayo and onion.

Just thinking about it, my hunger gets a hard-on.

But it's really time to stop. Not entirely, of course. There are still occasions that simply cry out for a steak and cheese sub--like days that have vowels in their name, or that cool part of the day when both hands are on the twelve.

You see? I am a sick, sick man.

But let us get semi-serious for a moment.

There came a moment a few weeks ago when the simplicity of how I ought to be eating came into my head with unfamiliar clarity. It began as the statement, if it isn't grown or killed, don't eat it. Which, I admit, is still pretty crude. But the idea felt right, moreso when it began to more fully form into the concept of eating more-or-less whole foods.

Let me say now that I'm not looking for a big debate on what a "whole" food is, or to bandy back and forth with anyone about how animals aren't actually "whole" foods. I'm an omnivore. I need my muscle tissue protein.

As the idea started to settle in, I attempted to do a little research on the internet about "eating whole." There are, of course, a boatload and a half of variations on the theme. My endpoint does a little one from Column A, one from Column B finagling. There were two concepts I quite took to. One is the "three's a crowd" concept. I can't recall exactly where I found it, but the person who put it forth basically tries not to eat anything with more than three ingredients, not including water. And those ingredients need to be unprocessed. For example, this evening I made a Trader Joe's brown rice pilaf. Ingredients on the label: brown rice, black barely, daikon radish seeds. Ding! It passes.

The other idea is to try to avoid anything that is more than three steps from its original form. This more or less leaves meat on the menu but nixes things like bread and pasta. Dairy. Cheese. Sugar.

All in all, my intent is to eat with a little more thought and a lot less processing. I know it's not hard if a little forethought goes into it. While I haven't fully pulled the trigger on this concept, a few recent meals stand out as examples of how I can eat relatively whole foods--and eat well.

Again, the idea is to keep things as close to their source form as possible. So tonight, along with that rice pilaf, I made a version of chicken piccata. Let us not stop to argue over the "wholeness" of the wine I used as a base for the sauce. A piccata is a sauce typically made with butter, wine, lemon and capers. Plus, the chicken (or veal, or what have you) is often floured before sauteeing. In my version, I dispensed with the flour and simply seasoned the chicken with salt and pepper. Sauteed it in a small amount of olive oil (whole). When it came time to sauce, I poured in a bit of chardonnay (it was open...normally I'd prefer a sauvignon blanc), the juice of half a lemon, and a small handful of capers. Heat up, reduce sauce, it was delicious. And everything was within my definition of "whole." There was also sauteed asparagus, although I admit to adding less than a quarter tablespoon of butter to the pan.

Or the other night--pork sirloin chops, very simply seasoned and served with a relish made from sauteed onion, fennel and apple. No butter in this one, just olive oil, low heat and time. Side dish was quinoa, a whole grain that's currently one of the darlings of the food world for its supergrain status--it's high in protein, has crazy amounts of vitamins and, if I'm not mistaken, once lifted a car off a toddler. Plus, it cooks in under 15 minutes, which makes me love it more. The whole meal, whole.

In the fridge right now there's a batch of homemade red pepper hummus: chickpeas, roasted red pepper (I'll get back to that), lemon juice, tahini, sea salt. Whole, whole, whole. The tahini is less than three steps removed from its original form and contains nothing but sesame. The red peppers were, I admit, from a jar, but going forward I'd roast my own. It's easy. (Plus, my ex-wife has a killer recipe for roasted red peppers with garlic that you serve on bread that's just to die for.)

The question clearly is one of convenience. Why do I hit the dollar drive through? Because it's on the way and it's easy. Why don't I just order one of those dollar side salads? Because only a moron tries to eat a salad while he's driving. Habit, habit, habit and it all requires breaking, breaking, breaking. I love to eat well. I love to cook. I have loved knowing that what I'm putting into my body isn't processed, that it's still rich and whole and that I'm getting a benefit beyond thinking, "Well, that filled the hole."

When I did Atkins a few years back I learned something important. Only your brain thinks you want something specific when you get hungry. Only your noggin craves the Buck Double. Your body just wants something in the hole, something to fill the vacancy. It doesn't matter what goes in, as long as something does. The other night I was at the grocery store, shopping hungry. I forced myself to not go for the pair of Peggy Lawton brownies that I habitually and mindlessly throw into my cart. I grabbed two delicious anjou pears. Got to the car and scarfed them down. My craving for anything faded. I had filled the hole. My brain, which was having a tough time choosing between the brownies or a couple of McChickens, considered the pears and the effect they were having on my receding hungry and said, Yeah, okay, I guess.

Fill the hole. That's all that matters. The trick is to not fill it with shit. 

I was going to try to do this for 30 days and blog about it, lay down some recipes, what have you. But two things happened. One was that, as usual, I was struck by the "why would anyone bother to read that?" virus that invades my head all too often. The other was knowing that 30 days of this doesn't matter. It's a step. A step in a proper direction, yes, but just one step. I'm notorious for making good starts on things and then just shrugging and stopping once the glimmer's worn off. But this matters. I could stand to lose weight, and cutting out things like bread and sugar--which this mindset would do--will help that. I need to get off my sedentary ass, accept that I'm closing in on 50 and make my living sitting on my can all day and create the time to exercise a little, because just the eating isn't going to do it alone.

I'm a heck of a cook, by all accounts. I like to eat well. I like flavor. I like fullness and freshness, smells and tastes and vibrancy. And yes, I like steak and cheese with Canadian bacon. But it's time one became the standard and the other became the infrequent treat.

I have pointed myself in what I think is a decent direction. I've taken a step or two. Now it's a matter of committing to the journey as best I can. I'll be sure to check in later and let you know how the trip goes.

Noted

SCENE: Front counter, Bruegger's Bagels, Hingham MA

She: Do you have your Bottomless Cup card?

Me: Don't have one.

She: Oh, I thought you did. I mean, you're in here so often.


Annnnnd....scene.

Vie

Winter and spring are going at it tooth-and-nail outside. Warm air pushing its way into winter's stronghold has kicked up a wind that's nudging this old house around and making me worry that something's going to fly off. I've already been outside once, in a charming ensemble of bathrobe and winter boots--tres chic!--to see if I'm missing anything. You know, like shingles, gutters, my dish, or the upstairs.Every gust makes the windows creak. Upstairs in the kid's room the floors actually whistle when the wind rushes through the bones of our 150-year-old house.

The skies are clear, a rich blue. When I went out, nothing froze and fell off. The wind, for all its Clash-of-the-Titans rage, was close to warm. It's been a long winter, all the New England charm of it gone as the accumulation rose up over 30, 40, 50 inches total. Now spring, armor-clad and singing Wagnerian arias, is taking the frost giant to task. It may be too early for her--this is New England after all, when snow in mid-April is greeted with a resigned, "It figures." But right now, spear in hand and packing a Valhalla-or-bust attitude, she's in it for us.

Go, spring. Kick winter's ass.

Scent.

The cat completely gets it. She can smell spring from here. Every time I walk through the mudroom she follows, lingering by the door with the most pathetic mew she can muster. I understand. The cellar is no longer the happy hunting ground slash killing floor it used to be. She's done her job down there. There's no more game for her, no more partially eviscerated presents for us. But she's waiting. A few times recently she's made a break for it as I come in or go out, taking advantage of the ice-damaged screen door's slow closing. She rushes out to the deck, senses piqued, huntress blood stirred and waking--only to get about five good kitty-bounds out before she realizes, Sweet mother o'feline, I'm freezing my paws off! At which point she double-times it back into the house.

But oh, the urge is there. She can't wait for that door to open onto a cooling evening, the air ripe with scents, the big lilac bush hiding fresh birds, the unmowed grass promising bunnies. She's ready to race across the deck once the Ice Age glacier that's consumed it has disappeared, vault over the back fence and into the tangle of brambles beyond, gone for days doing who-knows-what, reveling in the release and return to the girl she wants to be--not shut behind doors and napping in a dank basement, but roaming and stalking, sleeping the day away on a sun-warmed deck, being in the world, under the sky, and content.

The cat completely gets it.